Archives for April 2017

Artificial intelligence is surrounded by misunderstandings — even more so than augmented and virtual reality. We thought, since it’s going to play a large role in marketing in 2017, we’d clear the air about it.

Let’s cut to the chase: artificial intelligence is going to help us marketers create more human experiences.

Sounds like a contradiction? Read on.

Here we show you a quick overview of what AI is and how it’s beneficial to marketing. We’re also compiling a report where we take an in-depth look at AI as it was in 2016 and how it’s going to evolve in 2017.

Artificial Intelligence for Natural Emotions

Artificial intelligence is surrounded by a lot of myths. When we say ‘AI’ people tend to think ‘Skynet’ when they should be thinking ‘Person of Interest.’ Even if the latter depicts AI in a romanticized, anthropomorphized way as well, it’s a lot closer to what AI is today.

AI isn’t going to replace marketers and marketing teams. It isn’t going to replace human intelligence. Instead, it promises to free us from “repetitive drudgery.”

Simply put, AI helps us spend more of our time on mastering the human touch.

Content marketing natively with artificial intelligence

Once again, AI can sift through vast amounts of ones and zeros, spot patterns and trends. Recognizing those subtle changes in audience behavior could elude a human eye easily.

With the helpful suggestions of an artificial intelligence monitoring usage and performance all the time, marketers can refine their native content.

Without having to spend time analyzing performance, creativity becomes the differentiator. Again.

Engagement and AI

We’re still a long, long way away from a machine passing the famed Turing-test if we ever get there. AI won’t fool anyone anytime soon thinking they’re engaging with a human.

But there’s still a lot of value in using AI for engagement. It can fill in gaps where human interaction is not feasible or scalable.

Think virtual assistants like Siri, Cortana, or Alexa. We can’t put a human to answer every question people ask on Google. Customers are accepting — and expecting — the limitations of the technology in exchange for the value they receive.

Your customer service department doesn’t need to grow out of bounds. Similarly, you don’t need to annoy your customers with long waiting times while listening to horrible music. (But seriously, change your on-hold music today.)

Instead, you can deploy a chatbot to fill in the blanks until a human can give their attention.

Even in email, which is arguably the oldest piece of digital technology we use after web pages, AI can mean the difference between spamming your customers and engaging with them that brings in revenue.

Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, and The Value of Early Adoption

Way back when the internet first came around, most people didn’t understand what the digital transformation meant.

Nowadays we’re much savvier.

And yet, compiling our report we found that most big plays in the marketing space are still wide open. You can still get in on the ground floor for a lot of them, including AI.

Without going into too much detail (we do that in our report) let us say this: find the gaps in your marketing and fill it with AI.

Whether that’s frontline customer service or back-end strategic analysis, artificial intelligence can put you ahead of your competitors. Much like outsourcing the heavy lifting of marketing to agencies or fractional CMOs you should outsource everything non-essential as well.

AI isn’t plug-and-play, nor will it “take over” your world. It simply offloads the unimportant so you can focus on growth and build your business.

Click on image below to get your technology-driven marketing Trends Report for 2017